from Hacker News

Ask HN: What newspaper are you paying for these days?

by mynti on 6/17/25, 12:17 PM with 69 comments

I have been wondering with the total slop that is social media where to get well written and interesting news from. I am not only interested in tech or politics but other topics as well. What are your suggestions?

  • by wenc on 6/20/25, 3:34 AM

    Right now, I only have subscriptions to the NYTimes (US) and FT (international). But mostly I find out interesting stuff from https://marginalrevolution.com/ (which usually have links to FT, Bloomberg, WP, WSJ, etc.)

    I was once a New Yorker subscriber, but I no longer have patience for long form writing.

    I also once had subscriptions to the Montreal Gazette and Globe and Mail, which were pretty good for local and domestic news respectively (but only if you're Canadian). I also once subscribed to the Walrus when Jonathan Kay was editor, but it was too boring (it's Canadian, I'm Canadian, but I don't relate to anything they write about -- but I think they've gotten more interesting since).

    The Economist -- I'm torn. A lot of the writing sounds smart, but many of the articles are written by young Oxbridge PPE grads who can turn a phrase but don't have a lot of real world experience. The Economist seems to be read by people who want to seem smart, who want to hold an elite-certified opinion, but don't seem to want to to do the work to actually go deep on topics and would rather outsource their opinion formation to the Economist.

    I also once had a subscription to Foreign Affairs. Excellent long-form articles that I no longer have any patience for. You do get the occasional long form article that is so relevant and engaging that you're forced to read it to the end, but these are few and far between.

    I've gone back to reading books.

  • by segmondy on 6/17/25, 6:55 PM

    I pay for my local news. I need the news local and close to be to stay around. I read it once in a while, but I think it's ridiculous when one can't even get local news.

  • by robtherobber on 6/17/25, 12:31 PM

  • by BoxFour on 6/20/25, 2:06 AM

    Articles from The Atlantic tend to leave me feeling it was time well spent. I ended up subscribing after realizing that and haven't regretted it.

    I also subscribe to WSJ and The New Yorker, though I go back and forth frequently on whether they’re worth keeping.

  • by cm2012 on 6/18/25, 5:07 AM

    Substacks. I pay for Matt yglesias, Noah Smith, nate silver, basically with a good record of analysis and accuracy in economic and political topics.

  • by bubudrc on 6/22/25, 2:17 AM

    I use an app called [Newsreadeck](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/newsreadeck/id1593025917) to follow several local and international news sources at the same time and get the articles ready to read, so, I can see un a fast look, what several similar sources are writing about a same event. Then, I can choose what to read and believe

  • by jlongr on 6/17/25, 4:19 PM

    I get most of my news from NPR or BBC. I don't subscribe to either but I used to subscribe to Economist. It's still good but the writing style and tone is cloying.

    I've been considering Financial Times to replace it.

  • by elseleigh on 6/20/25, 7:59 PM

    I live in Aotearoa New Zealand and have only one subscription: to the Otago Daily Times https://odt.co.nz. It comes a close second in annual "most trusted media" surveys, after Radio New Zealand https://www.rnz.co.nz/ which I also read daily but is free.

  • by incomingpain on 6/17/25, 12:30 PM

    About a year ago I still had a few newspapers that I trusted. Reuters, National Post, CTV, financial times, etc.

    Today, each one of those have fell. They each provided examples of bias exceeding my threshold. There was a shocking slip of quality in the last 2 years at all of these.

    I trust none of them anymore. Journalism has fallen to their own BS.

  • by libraryatnight on 6/20/25, 2:14 AM

    I get Harpers, the Economist, and the London and New York Reviews of Books delivered. At a news stand I'll usually grab The Atlantic, WSJ, FT, and/or the MIT Tech Review depending on what looks interesting. I also need to go give Axios some money, I've been using their local reporting and keep meaning to do the yearly membership thing.

  • by Yizahi on 6/20/25, 1:16 PM

    Open question to all - I see a lot of ads recently for the Ground News app, it supposedly pulls different articles with different political leaning, label then accordingly and calculates news bias.

    Is it a good app in actual use? Any better than leading some moderately reputable newspaper?

  • by Daviey on 6/20/25, 9:35 AM

    I have a "free" subscription to the FT, and it's worth every penny. I would be tempted to pay for it if I didn't get it free, because it's my go-to news source as it is generally neutral on politics, therefore providing more accurate coverage.

  • by fandorin on 6/17/25, 8:10 PM

    what about The Economist? Is anybody subscribing it? I’m considering buying the paper subscription.

  • by _-_-__-_-_- on 6/20/25, 2:07 AM

    Unfortunately, I usually find out about things that directly affect my employer (government) on local subreddits before I find it through any other source. I will read CBC/Radio-Canada and TVO (public broadcasters for Canada and Ontario)

  • by nicbou on 6/17/25, 8:32 PM

    I pay the broadcast tax in Germany. The state-sponsored media covers my humble needs.

  • by totaldude87 on 6/20/25, 2:07 PM

    I have been using Particle app for all my news now. My Problems with newspapers or any published media is that they push opinion as news and to me news is news(without any lean towards anything)

  • by khurs on 6/17/25, 1:21 PM

    None.

  • by atonse on 6/20/25, 2:01 PM

    Does anyone subscribe to The Free Press? Worth paying for?

    It’s more long form rather than daily but I’m curious. I have liked their podcasts. Are they as heterodox behind the curtain as they claim?

  • by marvel_boy on 6/17/25, 12:19 PM

    The Information for technical news. https://www.theinformation.com/about

  • by mceoin on 6/20/25, 2:08 AM

    We pay for the local paper in my small rural town. Also the paper in the next town over that is slightly more regional to the small rural towns in our area.

  • by jasonpeacock on 6/20/25, 2:23 AM

    The Guardian for good US news coverage (I’m in the US).

  • by fckgw on 6/17/25, 8:19 PM

    I sub to Apple News+. Give a good mix of papers and magazines, and a lot of long form articles are broken out and highlighted in their own features.

  • by cafard on 6/19/25, 3:24 PM

    New York Times and Washington Post.

  • by slumberlust on 6/17/25, 9:31 PM

    The Onion has been doing physical newspapers this year and they are entertaining potty reads.

  • by bilsbie on 6/20/25, 2:07 PM

    I don’t think I would. I’ve been gelman amnesia’d so many times I don’t trust them.

  • by emeriezaiya on 6/21/25, 6:38 AM

    The New York Times is good.

  • by jkmcf on 6/20/25, 2:15 AM

    The Colorado Sun. It's left biased, but the right doesn't make it easy.

  • by zevon on 6/20/25, 5:11 AM

    None specifically. I pay for the local library to have access to most national newspapers in electronic form. Most (big) international ones, I could theoretically access through work - but that requires VPN and sometimes other authentications, so I honestly mostly rely on the "Bypass Paywalls Clean" Firefox extension.

  • by petesergeant on 6/20/25, 2:05 AM

    Current line-up for paid is WSJ, WashPo, and The Economist.

    WSJ has been excellent. Coverage and analysis are absolutely top notch. The editorials are … right wing trash, but usually well written. The Economist is slower news which is a good alternative; inserts its editorial stance into the actual news, but as a classical liberal I’m fine with that.

    I’ll probably let WashPo lapse; not sure it’s providing anything more than WSJ is at the moment for me.

    Others I’ve subscribed to: FT — it was good, slightly slower news than WSJ but faster than The Economist. Spectator — right wing trash but exceptionally well-written — if you want to know what the mean-spirited right are feeling on any issue, this will tell you. Foreign Policy — great analysis but honestly felt like news that was too slow.

  • by bediger4000 on 6/17/25, 2:24 PM

    Philadelphia Inquirer, it's owned by a foundation, not a billionaire. I mostly use it for access to daily comic strips.

    Colorado Sun, it's a non-profit. I think it was started by refugees from the Rocky Mountain News, after that failed. Mostly general Colorado news, so it's fairly local in scope for these modern times.

  • by msgodel on 6/17/25, 8:12 PM

    It's all bad. The only things even remotely reliable in my experience are SEC filings and market data. Everything else is mostly made up or lies.

  • by the__alchemist on 6/17/25, 1:17 PM

    None of the general news sources are worth paying for. "Gell-Mann Amnesia" applies broadly. They depict a perpetual drama. Each focuses from a different perspective, at the same dramatis personae. It's set up this way so viewers can follow, and be entertained. They know the plot threads, the characters, themes, the possible twists to watch for. This is similar to any TV series or cinematic universe. (e.g. Superheros, Tolkien-style fantasy etc)

    The themes change over time, but in a gradual, controlled manner. And (nearly) all perspectives point at the latest.

    Specialist news sources are sometimes high quality. For example: Quanta magazine, which articles we see frequently here. Ground news is an aggregator that tries to balance out the Left/Right bias of news outlets, but I think this misses the point.

  • by paulcole on 6/17/25, 2:39 PM

    WSJ, NYT, and Apple News+

  • by Apreche on 6/20/25, 2:50 AM

    thecity.nyc

    Local non-profit journalism. It’s free, but I have a recurring donation.

  • by TowerTall on 6/21/25, 4:16 AM

    none, but have donated to the guardian a few times

  • by dotcoma on 6/19/25, 5:29 AM

    None.

  • by rich_sasha on 6/20/25, 3:54 AM

    FT and, as a right-of-centre person, the Guardian (Guardian is "lefty").

    It's a trick a friend recommended to me once. Reading a paper that aligns with what you believe anyway doesn't challenge you and merely reinforces your biases. I might roll my eyes on some stuff in the Guardian but that's better than just feeding myself whatever I think already.

    Plus, in the UK, the default conservative paper, The Telegraph, seems to be tabloidising and click-bait-ising itself at breakneck pace. Whenever I see a link to it, it's all about how foreign immigrants steal our jobs, overwhelm public services and give us cancer, while Communist Labour is introducing gulags, where salt of the earth Brits are forced to put pronouns in email signatures.

    FT has a clear finance/econ bias but is a damn good newspaper apart from that. I find it staying far from directional biases but delivering insightful information.

  • by faebi on 6/17/25, 12:28 PM

    None. I find the quality and mostly left wing bias in the current state unacceptable. Too little neutral reporting and way too much subtle opinion making on the current thing.